Cat’s balls might have departed for outer space, but I don’t think they’ve completely cut off contact. They retain Cat’s scent and sprout furlike vegetation. The strands that leave these planets behave just like the fur that Cat sheds, dispersing information in all directions. Cat receives these signals and passes them on to me.

Cat frequently jumps onto my desk and walks across my keyboard. He pretends this is by accident, but I know he’s leaving coded messages. More than once, he’s trodden on certain keys to leave a string of gibberish. When I let him be, he’ll come back after a while to tap out another line of symbols. Unfortunately, I’m unable to decipher these messages.

Once, I called Husband over and asked, “Do you know what Cat is saying?” Screwing up his eyes, he carefully looked through the messages, left to right and right to left, making hmm noises. Impatiently, I said, “Do you understand cat-writing or not?” He made more thoughtful sounds, then said, “The way I see it, Cat is saying he’s hungry and wants something to eat.” I rolled my eyes. “Stop bluffing. He’s just had some chicken breast. How could he still be hungry?” Husband said under his breath, “He was sent by aliens to punish stupid earthlings like you.”

Husband’s muttering made me think: Could the symbols tapped out by Cat be messages from outer space? But no, what were the odds that alien beings would be sending me messages via Cat? It’s still a matter of debate whether aliens even exist at all. Much more likely these signals were coming from the Cat-Ball Planets. When I told Husband my theory, he chuckled. “What are you talking about? What Cat-Ball Planets? This is clearly the work of aliens!” Waxing eloquent, he began listing all the evidence for his hypothesis: Cat loves being active at night because the humans are asleep, so he can go unobserved to the window and communicate with aliens in the night sky. Every strand of Cat’s fur is an antenna that can send or receive messages, and Cat only sheds his fur in order for new transmitters to replace the older ones, constantly upgrading his technology so he remains state of the art. The secret messages sent by the aliens remain in Cat’s body, just like the food he eats. He is absorbing all kinds of information, and when he sees a suitable opportunity, such as a human being using her laptop, he’ll leap up onto the desk and quickly tap out these messages onto the screen.

Husband’s explanation was persuasive, and I couldn’t immediately think of a comeback, but I still believed in my intuition: these messages must surely come from the Cat-Ball Planets not from some other unknown species.

I’ve saved all of Cat’s cryptic messages in a folder, and whenever I have a spare moment, I go back to staring at them. Hopefully the day will come when I’m finally able to crack this secret code.